A British view of US auto-mania

A local story of an incident that happened not too far from where I live made it all the way to the UK and was reported in the Guardian.

A woman from Summerville, South Carolina (Left.) was driving her own children and a neighbor kid to school.

As she neared the school she encountered a group of schoolchildren walking in the middle of the road. (There was no sidewalk on that particular street.)

She honked at them but they refused to move; so she drove into them, knocking down a 12 year old, two 13 year olds, and one 14. None were seriously hurt, three were treated on the scene, and one was taken to the hospital.

She told police, “I wanted to knock some sense into them.” (That statement sounds familiar.) When the story ran on my local paper’s website, I posted the following comment:

“This incident that involved children walking in the middle of the road, is exactly the same issue as cyclists on the road that everyone gets their shorts in an uproar over.

Even though kids can be annoying when they won’t move out of your way, you have to deal with it; you can’t go running them down.

They had a perfect right to be on a public street. It has nothing to do with the size of your vehicle, or whether you pay road tax; it is a basic human right to travel from A to B on a public highway.

It doesn’t matter if you are in a car, riding a bicycle, or walking; whoever was there first basically has the right of way.”

This woman made an extremely poor choice; she has been charged with four counts of first-degree assault and battery and could face up to ten years in jail. Would it have hurt her to drop her kids off at that point and let them walk the rest of the way to school?

It always amazes me, the sense of entitlement that car ownership invokes. A person would never push to the front of a line at a theatre or at the supermarket; or scream at people to “Hurry it up,” it would be considered the height of rudeness. Yet it seems perfectly normal for some to honk or yell at anyone impeding their rate of travel on a public street or highway.

The Guardian used this story in part to illustrate America’s obsession with the automobile. While I agree with that premise, the article is filled with extreme exaggerations, like stories of people shooting themselves in the foot to get a handicap parking spot.

It also seems a little strange coming from a British publication, as from what I hear and read the UK is fast approaching “Auto-mania” status itself.

The big difference is that the UK does not have the luxury of the amount of space the US has.

There are tiny villages in Britain where whole communities could quite easily fit in the area occupied by an average US supermarket or strip mall parking lot.

The Guardian points out that in the US, whole city blocks are devoted to car parking. This is true, and how often do you see any retail business parking lot more than half full; such a waste of space. And of course all this wasted space and urban sprawl means greater distances from our homes, to the store, or to our workplace, making automobile ownership a necessity for most people.

If Britain devoted as much space to the automobile as America does the entire country would be paved with concrete and asphalt. The UK should be grateful they did not have the luxury of space to waste; returning to a more sustainable lifestyle will be far easier than it will be for the United States. 

The Guardian also mentions that Americans used to laugh at the Chinese for the way they traveled to work by bicycle in their millions.

Now thanks largely to the outsourcing of our manufacturing jobs to countries like China, they have prospered, and Chinese workers are buying cars for the first time.

Now they are competing for the ever dwindling world oil supply, which will force the price up that the US consumer has to pay.

Other countries like India will be the next to follow and the situation can only get worse. The whole American lifestyle and the way its infrastructure is designed, has always revolved around the automobile and cheap gasoline.

I predict that before very much longer people will find themselves spending their entire salary to pay for, maintain, and fuel their car. They will be working to run a car that they need to get to work. It will no longer be viable for families to own two or more cars.

All of a sudden, people riding bicycles will not look so stupid.

                       

Hate Crimes

Hatred, prejudice, and intolerance is alive and well here in the South. For that matter it is alive and well in most of the US, and in other parts of the world, especially in the so called “Civilized” world.

Countries like Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, places where people are educated and well informed, and you would not expect such base behavior.

It is against the law in most of these civilized countries to show intolerance to another based on their race, religion, sexual preference, etc.

Hate crime and bias crime laws are numerous and varied enough to inspire whole law classes or online criminology courses, and new ones are still being passed.

Most people do not openly show prejudice to another on these grounds; it is no longer socially acceptable. I hear less racist jokes or comments than I did twenty or thirty years ago.

However, if it becomes socially unacceptable to be prejudice against one group, the human race can improvise and find others to attack where it is okay to openly spew out hatred and vitriol towards that group. 

Whenever there is a cycling related story on a news media’s website, just read the comments from the general public. Even when it is a report of a cycling death where family, loved ones, and friends of the deceased are reading these comments; the hatred and intolerance comes spewing out.

If it were the death of a black person that was being reported, these same people would not post racial slurs, even though they could do it anonymously. If they did the news media would be quick to delete it as most readers would find it extremely offensive.

Where is the difference? A cyclist has died, and strangers crawl out from the under-belly of our so called civilized society, reacting to some basic tribal instinct, to make a judgment on that person simply because he was riding a bicycle.

They base this judgment on the worst behavior they have ever witnessed by other people on bicycles. Maybe they haven’t actually witnessed this behavior, but they have read about it in similar comments on other cycling related articles.

These comments perpetuate the hatred, just as racial slurs and jokes used to perpetuate racial intolerance. They post put downs and remarks about the appearance of cyclists, they ridicule the clothing, and post worn out cliches like "Lance Armstrong Wannabes."

If you think about it, this has nothing what-so-ever to do with anything, in the same way that the color of a person’s skin was never a valid reason for hating a complete stranger.

The other day I was riding my bike on a street close to my home, the road was straight and traffic was flowing past me without problems. A beat up old pick-up truck pulled up behind me, the driver revved his engine a few times, got as close as he could then gunned it, passing me with barely twelve inches to spare.

I could see the driver stretching his neck to look back in his rear view mirror to see how I would react. In my younger years, when I was full of piss and vinegar, I would have least given him the finger. I might have even chased him down to try to catch him at the next traffic light.

Maybe now I am a little wiser, or maybe I just don’t have the energy, but I decided the best course was to act like nothing had happened. To give him the finger would have only made it a game and encourage him to do it the next cyclist he saw on the road.

I could have taken his number and reported it to the police. It is against the law here in South Carolina to harass a cyclist, with a penalty of $250 fine.  However, I have emailed my local police department before on cycling safety issues, and have never received a reply; I doubt they would do anything.

Criminology is seldom applied such incidents to properly investigate death or injury to cyclists; this reflects the attitude of the general public. Just as years ago, attacks on black people were ignored. My basic human right to travel freely on a public highway is being threatened.

The action of the driver of this pick-up truck was based on prejudice and intolerance, and had he injured me it would be a hate crime. How else can you describe an attack on a complete stranger for no reason other than that person looks different and has chosen a different form of transport. Apart from that, I was hurting or hindering no one, and did nothing to provoke such a response.

Do we need to be constantly adjusting our criminal justice system? Bringing in more laws making it illegal to show intolerance towards this or that particular group. We need a large section of the population to realize it is morally wrong to attack someone verbally or physically. Especially when the attack is on a stranger and is based solely on appearance or someone seen as different.

To those who perpetuate this intolerance I say this: The cyclist you see on the road is someone’s son or daughter; someone’s father or mother. Yet some of you would run them down and kill them because they dare to ride a bicycle on what you perceive as your highway.

When their death is reported online others will post hate comments implying that they somehow deserved to die; thus you breed more intolerance.

Shame on you, shame on you   

                         

Contador's "Get out of ban free card."

I am no fan of Floyd Landis but.... he has a right to be ticked off right now.

Last November Landis was interviewed on German television and said that the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) is corrupt and protects certain riders.

Now the UCI on February 7th sent Landis a letter giving him 15 days to retract his statement or be sued in a Swiss court. Floyd shot back an email that pretty much said, “I’m broke, so go ahead and sue good luck.”

What is the UCI thinking with the timing of this threat of a law suit? The handling of the Contador affair screams hypocrisy. Landis was found to have doped in the 2006 Tour de France, and was immediately stripped of his Tour win and barred from competition for two years.

Contador on the other hand was found to have Clenbuterol in his system within days of the Tour de France finish in July 2010, but the UCI kept it quiet until the end of September. Then they only said something because details had been leaked to the press.

Next the UCI pussy-foots around for months and finally handed the case over to the Spanish Cycling Federation, who initially gave Contador a one year ban. Alberto got off light when you consider most other athletes get two years.

Now in an unprecedented move a week later the Spanish Federation reverses its finding, and now says Contador is innocent. This came soon after the Spanish Prime Minister no less, stated that Contador had broken no Spanish law.

Floyd Landis broke no US law, but the American President or other top ranking US politician didn’t get involved in his case. The World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) has set a zero tolerance for clenbuterol in an athlete’s body, no matter how the substance got there. Its presence warrants a sanction; otherwise why have this rule.

Other athletes have already been sanctioned because of clenbuterol use; you can’t pick and choose who gets banned and who doesn’t. This is not criminal law of “Innocent until proven guilty” no one is being executed or sent to prison. These are rules of a sport that all the players agree to abide by.

The UCI has to step in now and ban Contador for the full two years and strip him of his TDF win. If they don’t they lose all credibility, and Floyd Landis is right; there is one rule for the super stars, and another for the rest.

The UCI needs to either strictly enforce its own rules on doping or get out of dope testing altogether and abide by whatever the WADA decides. The later might be the better choice because the UCI has a conflict of interest between promoting the sport of cycling, and enforcing the rules.

Right now they are failing miserably on both counts, and they are killing the sport they claim to love and uphold. If Contador rides in this year’s Tour de France I for one will not feel inclined to watch it.

Here are more reactions to the Contador non sanction case.

                         

Blame the victim

I am usually reluctant to post stories here about cycling deaths; there often seems little purpose on dwelling on the negativity of these tragic events.

However, this morning I read of two cases where not only have cyclists been killed, but the families of the deceased have been denied a proper investigation into the incident, and police going out of their way to blame the cyclist for their own death.

If there is any good to come out of these tragedies it has to be a push by families, friends, and cycling advocates everywhere, to bring an end to this “Oh well, it’s only a cyclist” attitude. Especially by law enforcement, who after all are there to serve and protect.

The video above shows the mother of Alice Swanson, a bicycle commuter from the Washington, DC area who was killed in July of 2008 when a garbage truck made a right turn at a light and ran over her.

Police failed to file a proper report at the time of the incident, and then later placed the blame on the dead person to cover up their own inadequacies.    

The second incident I read of has just happened this last Saturday in San Diego. Cyclist Ben Acree was riding east on Friars Road when he was hit by a large commercial vehicle that was exiting a freeway off-ramp. San Diego Police Lt. Dan Christman said:

"It appears at this time that the bicyclist traveled in front of the truck violating his right-of-way and was struck by the commercial vehicle."

All Lt. Dan Christman had to say was that a truck struck a cyclist, but instead he is already expressing an opinion that Ben Acree was somehow responsible for his own death.

Unless they have some different rules in San Diego, Friars Road is a through road, and vehicles merging onto that road from an off ramp, have to yield to traffic traveling along Friars Road, not the other way round.

The cyclist was clearly in a bike lane; the picture above shows it marked on the pavement between the truck and the bike lying in the road.

With the San Diego incident just happened, I hope that all cyclists and cycling advocates from that area will push for a swift and proper enquiry into this tragic death.

There are lessons to be learned from the Alice Swanson case; don’t let this one drag on unresolved for almost three years. 

More details of the San Diego death on Biking in LA

                         

Should bicycles have number plates?

I have recently been reading about various places, including Long Beach, CA, Toronto, and New York City, toying with the idea of bike registration, and number plates for bikes. 

This has already been tried so many times in the past, and failed miserably, mainly because it becomes an administrative nightmare, and the revenue generated doesn’t even begin to cover the cost of implementing such a plan.

The call for bike registration is for the most part a knee jerk reaction by the motoring public in response to seeing an increasing number of cyclists on the road.

I read comments like, “If bicycles had number plates, then riders could be held accountable for their actions; like the ones who run red lights, or hit pedestrians and keep riding.”

Cars have number plates, and their drivers break the law all the time, how many take the time to note their number and report it? And if an infraction is reported, what are the chances of anything being done about it.

Does anyone really think that if a person calls the police to report a cyclist going through a red light that the police are going to allocate the manpower to track down and prosecute the errant cyclist?

Another reason justifying bike registration; it cuts down on bike theft. How does that work? The first thing a thief is going to do is remove the number plate; even go register the bike in his own name. 

Are bicycles to have VIN numbers and a Title of Ownership like a car? If a bicycle is to be registered it really should have these items, but again think of the administrative cost.

Bike registration is so impractical and implementing it has so few benefits that I really can’t understand why anyone is even talking about the idea.

It is true some cyclists break the law, but that has a lot to do with the police not enforcing the law. Having a number plate on a bike will do absolutely nothing if there is no enforcement of the law to go along with it.

In New York City it was recently announced that police would start clamping down on scofflaw cyclists. What has happened is that cops are taking the easiest way to fill ticket quotas. They are ticketing cyclists for minor infractions like not having the proper reflectors.

They are going to places like Central Park, where there are a lot of cyclists and few cars, and ticketing cyclists for running red lights there; instead of trying to catch the ones that are a real problem, the ones running red lights at busy city intersections.

Bike registration, as well as being impractical, is just plain wrong. We all share a basic human right to travel from one place to another. If we are doing so under our own power, it should be entirely free of any government intervention.

If cyclists are to be registered or issued a license, what is next, the registration of pedestrians? Pretty soon we will need a license to step outside our own front door.

That doesn’t mean that cyclists should be above the law, and they should allways behave in a responsible manner. The money spent on implementing a bike registration program would be far better spent on education.

A few well made TV ads aired a prime time; educating motorists that cyclists belong on the road, and they need to get used to the idea. Try to educate the few cyclists who give us all a bad name by riding like anarchistic morons.

Any society will always contain a cross-section of people who are anti-social jerks, and unfortunately some of them will be riding bicycles. Making all cyclists register their bikes is not going to change that.